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Yankees Fans vs. Mets Fans: Tale of the Tape

Martha Hernandez of New York peers around other spectators as she awaits the floats carrying New York Yankees players during a ticker-tape parade along Broadway celebrating their 27th World Series championship on Friday, Nov. 6, 2009, in New York.

AP Photo

Sure they share a city, boast two of the highest payrolls in major league baseball and are still breaking in swank new ballparks, but the Yankees and the Mets have little else in common. For the Yankees, anything less than a championship is considered a failure. For the Mets, "prevention and recovery" is the goal. =http:>

And just like the franchises they root for, fans of both teams also have their particular quirks. The Wall Street Journal, however, tries to quantify those differences ($) with in depth polling of 650 New York baseball fans.

Here are the (sometimes surprising) results in polling among New York men:

• Sixty percent root for the Yankees, compared with just 33 percent for the Mets.

• There's little difference in education and income - 30 percent of Mets fans stopped their education during or just after high school compared to 25 percent of Yankees fans; 28 percent of Yankees fans earn more than $100,000, compared to 24 percent of Mets fans.

• In a bit of a surprise, Mets fans are 43 percent more likely to drink beer than Yankees fans. And 30 percent of Yankees fans say they don't drink at all, nearly double the rate for Mets fans (16 percent).

• Their personal lives are also different. Mets fans are more likely to be married, 51 percent, and own pets, 47 percent. Yankees fans prefer the single life, with 59 percent unmarried and 58 percent not owning pets.

• Some of the poll contradicts some widely held assumptions about the two fan bases as well. Yankees fans are almost twice as likely than Mets fans to worry - 15 percent to 8 percent - and blue-collar fans make up more of the Bronx Bombers faithful than the Mets - 26 percent to 17 percent.